John Beal: 1950-2006: River steward never backed down

Updated 10:00 pm, Sunday, June 25, 2006

John Beal, steering his boat upstream on the Duwamish River in 2002, spearheaded efforts to restore habitat along the river. (P-I file)

John Beal, steering his boat upstream on the Duwamish River in 2002, spearheaded efforts to restore habitat along the river. (P-I file)

Photo: Paul Joseph Brown/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

John Beal: 1950-2006: River steward never backed down

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John Beal had a knack for showing up in places people would rather he wouldn't, whether it was surprising his daughter sneaking out with a boy or catching the city of Seattle destroying wetlands.

With relentless tenacity, he single-handedly engineered the restoration of a trash-infested urban stream named Hamm Creek and became an advocate for the Duwamish Watershed. Some people undoubtedly wished he would just go away.

But Beal, who died Friday after suffering a heart attack, leaves behind miles of salmon-bearing streams and rivers in remarkably better condition than he found them.

It was a deal he made after doctors told him in 1979 that his heart, damaged by a series of cardiac arrests, would hold out only for another few months. He thought he'd spend his last days doing something good and started hauling washing machines and trash out of the creek near his South Park home.

Always stubborn, he surprised everyone by living another 27 years to age 56.

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The Vietnam veteran, who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, was responsible for bringing disparate agencies to the table to discuss cleanup strategies on the Duwamish River.

With four kids to feed, he'd pilfer from his disability check to fund his stream-restoration work, which included transplanting salmon, bugs, crawfish, ants and all manner of plants to try to rebuild a decimated ecosystem.

He moved mountains of trash from the Marra Farm property in South Park and helped immigrant families learn how to grow organic food there.

Recently, his many complaints led the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to tell the city of Seattle that it had illegally filled in wetlands while building a firefighter training facility in South Seattle.

"He was a person that motivated people, and I think it had more to do with his own fire within himself," said James Rasmussen, a fellow environmental advocate and elected councilman for the Duwamish Tribe.

"I would hope that people would remember him for his unwavering work he did in the community ... and also that all the work he was working on isn't done," he said.

Those include a National Wetlands Award given by government agencies working on national resource issues, the Seattle P-I's Jefferson Award for public service and a King County Executive Legacy Award. He was twice featured in Reader's Digest's "Heroes of Today."

Beal loved being outdoors, camping and finding solace in the woods that reminded him of Vietnam, said his wife of nearly 40 years, Lana Beal.

He held dozens of jobs after the war, repairing televisions, inventing an onboard camera for hydroplanes and selling security equipment.

After getting what he thought was a death sentence, he went down to Hamm Creek, which winds through 3.5 miles of industrial and residential land from White Center to the Duwamish River just south of Seattle.

"It was full of garbage, trucks tires, everything you can imagine" Beal told the P-I in 2000. "I decided that instead of laying down dead, I'd start picking up the garbage ... And if I died in the process, so be it."

After hauling tons of trash out of the decimated stream, he set about trying to bring back fish, Lana Beal said. But he soon realized that there weren't any organisms to support them.

He started working on building the biological part of the ecosystem, she said, scooping up rocks from the Green River with larvae on the underside and transplanting them to the creek.

Along the way, Beal worked with hundreds of volunteers and schoolchildren, telling them that restoring urban streams requires more commitment than planting a tree and never thinking about it again.

"That was a big part of what he was telling groups -- it had to be monitored, it had to have stewardship, it was a never-ending thing," Lana Beal said.

His work paid off, with salmon coming back to spawn in the creek in the 1980s.

Beal also turned his attention to the greater Duwamish River watershed. He got a boat and patrolled the outfalls where companies released pollution into the water.

He went door to door asking companies to clean up their practices, but wasn't afraid to videotape violations, threaten lawsuits and take water samples.

Liana Beal, 38, said her father could be a thorn in people's sides -- he had things he wanted done and got upset when that didn't happen. Recent struggles with the city of Seattle over the wetlands violations took a particular toll on him, friends and family said.

But he often said to them that he had a deal with God and that you can't just resign from a job when he's your boss.

"He was just like a one-man show, and everybody thought he was crazy, and he didn't care because he loved the stream, and he wanted to see it healthy, and he wanted to see the salmon come back," Liana Beal, of Burien, said.

In addition to his wife, Lana, and daughter Liana, Beal is survived by sons Robert Beal of Burien and John D. Beal of San Angelo, Texas; daughter Michelle Beal of Federal Way; grandson Justin Lange of Burien; a brother, Harry Beal of Duvall; and a sister, Harriet Beal Cormack of Portland.